


...And Then There Were Cupcakes

by josephina_x



Series: The One Wherein... the Kents are more Luthor than Luthor(?!) [2]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Post Episode: s02e03 Suspect, Rating for Language, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 17:33:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex is slowly introduced into the Ways of the Kent.</p><p>--Not really. ‘Slow’ would be a misnomer.</p><p>Also, Clark can be disturbingly quiet for all that he is an elephant in the room… and supposedly a hostage. Lex would consider making him sit down and read the Art of War, among other things, but he’s worried that he might come to the disconcerting realization that Jonathan might have already had him memorize it...</p>
            </blockquote>





	...And Then There Were Cupcakes

**Author's Note:**

> Title: ...And Then There Were Cupcakes  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex  
> Rating: R (for language)  
> Spoilers: Up through the end of 2x13 in season 2. Diverges around and shortly after 2x13 (Suspect).  
> Word count: ???+  
> Summary: Lex is slowly introduced into the Ways of the Kent.
> 
> \--Not really. ‘Slow’ would be a misnomer.
> 
> Also, Clark can be disturbingly quiet for all that he is an elephant in the room… and supposedly a hostage. Lex would consider making him sit down and read the Art of War, among other things, but he’s worried that he might come to the disconcerting realization that Jonathan might have already had him memorize it...  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd. AU. Yet more Evil Italics Of Doom.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: Not going to update anytime soon, for all that I have the upcoming chunk plot fully specced out already.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex wished that he had a decent pair of boots as he sat down at the kitchen table. --Not brought, _had_. He didn't even have a set at the mansion to have been able to have packed, an oversight that seemed patently obvious, now.

After all, if he'd ever meant to take advantage of living in the countryside and take up horseback riding once again, he'd have needed at least one good set for that. But keeping a stallion or even a mare at the Potter horse farm would have been awkward, considering, and he'd never found the excuse to manage the time to take care of other arrangements...

Frankly, he wasn't looking forward to spending more money he didn't have much of on 'farm-friendly' body and foot apparrel. He was looking forward to sneaking back into the mansion to retrieve the rest of his things even less. Getting his cars away from Lionel would be a chore in and of itself, driving them away one at a time. Would Jonathan even be willing to drive him back for several trips, or would he have to walk it? And where would he store them all in the meantime?

That didn't even account for the rest of his clothing (far too much to fit in his new room at the farm, which was smaller than his closet), his shoes (he'd only brought three pairs with him, and one was already unsalvageable for off-the-farm wear), and anything else he owned that might fetch a decent price on the market -- like his Warrior Angel figurines, collectibles, and other general merchandise. He wasn't going to sell his 'for reading' set of Warrior Angel comics, of course -- not that they would sell for much anyway, not being in mint condition -- but he didn't even have anyplace to store them. There was hardly enough room at the farm.

Were there any storage facilities in town, that he could rent? ...Worse, setting aside the problems of his cars -- which would require a garage to store them in -- how large a space would he need to rent to hold all of the rest of his things? And how much would it cost?

Lionel likely wouldn't throw out whatever of Lex's things he'd left behind at the mansion once he realized what Lex was doing ...not right away. But Lex had never taken this much of a stand against him before while so much of that which was still his was still within Lionel's grasp. He wasn't sure.

...Actually, Lionel wouldn't have to throw anything out -- he'd just have to remove Lex's access to the grounds. Damnit.

"You're thinking too hard for a man who ought to be focusing on surviving lunch," Jonathan told him, and Lex blinked and sat back as the man laid down a plate full of sandwiches in front of him on the table, then set down a full glass of milk.

"I'm just thinking about what I might not be able to get out of the mansion and sell before Lionel stops me from doing it," Lex told him, frowning down at his food. His 'board.' ...Hell, and survive was probably a good word for it. The sandwiches looked a little rough...

"You might do better focusing on what you can do, not what you can't," Jonathan warned him, "And not go depending on anything you don't know for certain, especially when it comes to Lionel."

Lex grimaced, mostly because he was probably right, then picked up a lopsided haphazardly put-together half-a-sandwich and took a bite.

_..._

_..._

_...Oh, dear lord._

If the ham in the sandwiches hadn't been sliced off a recently-baked pork loin, Lex would... well, he'd bet money that they had been. The mustard and whatever else that had been used to season it must have been homemade, and so had the bread -- and now he knew why the bread had looked so odd -- but it tasted absolutely _exquisite_ , and not just because he was hungry.

_Hah! Leftovers, indeed. Thank god for Martha Kent!_

Then Lex stifled a grimace at the thought, because _divorce_ and _at the mansion with Lionel_ , and then stifled a wince because _Jonathan_ and _what are the rest of the meals here going to be like?_ because Martha would no longer be around to cook them...

Well, he was _definitely_ going to enjoy this while it lasted.

Jonathan was just as quiet as he was as they tucked in, the milk was as fresh as the rest of it, and Lex found himself finishing off the sandwiches and reaching for the stack of assorted cut vegetables -- carrot sticks, tomato wedges, cucumber slices -- on the large plate between them.

Lex dealt himself out a couple spoonfuls of what looked like some sort of dip, tried it out, and sighed happily as he munched away.

"Want any more?" he was asked as he finished off what he could manage, and he shook his head as he sat back to take a deep breath and let things settle a bit.

He refocused on the present as he did so. _Farmwork first,_ he thought. _And I'm going to need boots for that, and soon._ Frankly, he wasn't looking forward to ruining another pair of shoes, because the first would barely be usable indoors once he'd managed to clean them up a bit. That'd leave him with just one pair, and...

...was it possible that Jonathan might have a spare pair he could borrow? Or be able to go off and grab a set from town before starting work again after lunch?

And then the phone rang.

Lex glanced over his shoulder at the handset on the wall.

"Mind getting that?" said Jonathan.

Lex glanced at him, then mentally shrugged -- he was closer to the phone after all, and it wasn't likely that Lionel would be calling the house.

He got up and picked up the handset.

"Kent Farm," he said.

"Ah, hello? Jon?" he heard the woman ask in doubtful confusion, and he had to smirk slightly. It was as he'd surmised -- _of course_ no-one would necessarily recognize his voice from hearing him over the phone.

"No, sorry," he said, shifting the phone to his other ear. "May I ask who is calling?"

"Edna Morris, dear," he was told, and his eyebrows raised with some amusement.

"One moment please," Lex said, biting his lip slightly. He turned to Jonathan and covered the receiver.

"Do you know an Edna Morris?" he asked mock-brightly, playing at innocence, and Jonathan sighed and set down his sandwich, motioning for the phone. Lex held out the phone with a lopsided smirk and held in the laughter as Jon grumbled to himself and got up from his seat. He took the phone from Lex, amazingly enough without entangling either of them in the long, twisted cord.

Lex's mouth twitched upwards a few more times as he reseated himself at the table and picked up his glass of milk to take another sip, eyeing Jon as he said his hearty hellos and easily picked up the one-sided conversation.

 _CEO to secretary in a day,_ Lex thought with some amusement as he finished off his milk, not that he didn't know how to do that, either -- he did; he'd seen it often enough. ...Well, ranch hands were supposed to do odd jobs sometimes. It'd make sense that farmhands would do whatever 'work' was necessary at any given moment, too.

Jonathan pulled out a binder out of nowhere -- somewhere on the counter -- and was nodding and said 'ok' and 'sure' a lot, as he marked something down with a pencil. "All right, we'll have it ready by two," he ended the call with, and put the phone receiver back on the cradle.

Lex raised an eyebrow, or perhaps two. "Produce delivery?" he asked, as he snagged another piece of cucumber and popped it in his mouth.

Jonathan shook his head as he set the binder down on the counter. "Baked goods confirmation," he said instead. "Sourdough bread, one loaf."

Lex frowned. "But Mrs.--" Lex grimaced. " _Martha_ isn't here."

"I know."

"And she only quit working for my father less than a week ago," Lex said, confused. He hadn't thought she'd had the time to continue the farm's baked goods side business while working for his father. He certainly hadn't seen any of it at the town's weekend farmer's markets lately.

"Yes, and she started taking orders the morning after, "Jonathan confirmed. "Word gets around quick, when it comes to Martha's baked goods," Jonathan said, giving Lex a rueful smile.

"...You're going to pass the order along?"

Jonathan gave him a look.

Lex got a weird, uncomfortable feeling in his chest. "But that woman's going to be expecting..." he trailed off. Was Jonathan trying to sabotage Martha's business? --Techncially, it was _hers_ after all, and separate from the farming business they did.

"Yes, she is," Jonathan said. "And we'll get it to her."

Lex blinked.

"Well, who's going to make it?" Lex asked him. " _You?_ " Wasn't to-order homemade bread supposed to be freshly baked, and not already done from the night before?

Jonathan gave him the once-over, then turned and grabbed something from the set of books on the counter behind him.

"No, you are," Jonathan said, shoving a thick volume into Lex's chest. Lex, startled, grabbed it reflexively -- because, _book_ \-- and Jonathan let go and walked back to his chair.

Lex stared at him, then pulled the book away from his chest and stared down at it. He was holding a cookbook.

"I don't know how to make bread," Lex said evenly, feeling his eyes go wide.

Jonathan snorted as he grabbed up the last bit of his sandwich and popped it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, then picked up his plate. "That's what the cookbook is for," he informed Lex, as if it were obvious.

Lex stared at Jonathan as the man cleared the table -- both placesettings -- and started in on the dishes.

In frustration, Lex opened the book, looking for sourdough bread in the front, then in the back in the index. "This isn't what I signed on for," he told Jonathan, as he searched for the correct listing. He scowled down at the page as he finally found the entry and saw how much time the recipe was supposed to take. "I'm not Martha, I can't bake like she can, and there's no way in hell I can make bread in a little less than two hours when the dough is supposed to be left in the refrigerator overnight!" he declared, turning the book towards Jonathan and smacking a finger up against the directions, which proclaimed just that.

"True." Jonathan glanced up from the sink, elbow-deep in soapy water, and squinted at Martha's handscribbled notes on the page, which declared just that. "It takes more than three hours from scratch start-to-finish because of the rise times; if you want to do it really right, closer to four," Lex was told. "It's less for some of the 'fridge recipes, depending on how you do it, though they don't always taste as good," he shrugged. "But Martha made up the dough last night. Should be in there already." He nodded at the 'fridge, then turned back down to the sink and continued his scrubbing. "Think I saw it on the middle shelf, towards the back. Should be labeled."

Lex let out a breath of frustration, (gently) dropped the open cookbook down onto the kitchen table, and proceeded to search through the fridge for the missing bread dough.

He found the bread dough.

"I don't see why you can't just put it in the oven yourself if the dough is already made up," Lex said, pulling the container of dough out and plopping it down on the counter, then backing away from it, literally trying to distance himself from the stuff.

"If I do the baking, they'll be able to tell that I did it," Jonathan informed him calmly.

"And they won't be able to tell the difference if I do it instead?" Lex scoffed.

"Of course they will," Jonathan told him, as he finished with the last piece of cutlery and wiped it dry. "They'll also know it wasn't me who did it," he ended, giving Lex a look like that was the point of the whole thing.

"This isn't what I signed on for," Lex repeated. "You're hiring me to take over Clark's chores. Clark's chores _don't_ include baking. --The baking is a separate business," he emphasized. "If I do it, I should at least get paid!" he said caustically.

Jonathan eyed him.

"Fair enough," Jon said.

Lex stared at him, taken aback. He hadn't actually meant it; he'd thought the demand of payment for services rendered would have the old farmer saying 'never mind' or getting in an argument with him, considering that he had said he couldn't pay him for--

"I'll pay you fifty-percent of the gross profits for each baked good sold," he was told. "I'll pay for or provide the supplies," Jonathan said, "and you only fill orders that are given first. No making up lots of baked goods and trying to sell 'em after the fact," he was told in a warning tone.

Lex frowned. "Supplies are, what, the oven, gas, kitchen...?"

Jonathan nodded at him while drying his hands off with a dishtowel. "And the foodstuffs, ingredients."

"Cost of the goods usually includes the labor," Lex put out there. "That should include my pay."

Jonathan sighed as if Lex was acting intentionally dumb. "Fifty percent of the difference between the sale price minus the cost of the ingredients."

Lex thought about this. Then he said suspiciously, "If it's something like rhubarb or apples or produce from the farm, then how do you calculate--"

Jonathan reached forward and tapped the top of the binder he'd written down the order inside. "That's listed. We worked that all out awhile ago. Update it every year. Same prices as anyone else buying discounted lots, just for smaller quantities." He paused. "Receipts from grocery store trips for spices and other goods are in there as well. Wet and dry goods that we've got a standing order on from another farm, like the dairy down in Granville, get listed in there, too."

Lex frowned, then stepped sideways a little closer and opened up the binder. He glanced through the front section, but other than the prices seeming consistent, he didn't know enough about quantities for anything to jump out at him as fair or not... not until he flipped a few pages and saw what looked like a list for the baseline costs for each baked good.

 _...All right,_ thought Lex. That seemed reasonable enough, probably. "Fifty percent is low," Lex said. "I'll be doing all of the work. I should be getting seventy percent, at least."

"The only thing I'm discounting from the sale are the prices are for the ingredients only," Jonathan reminded him, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter easily. "I have to cover all of the overhead -- the gas, the oven, the kitchen, the water and soap and cookware," Jonathan listed off. "All the miscellaneous supplies like disposable pie plates, and the cost of transportation. I also have to eat the cost if an order gets cancelled, or if something doesn't come out right."

"Burnt or spoiled?" Lex said, then at Jonathan's affirmative nod, he realized why the man didn't want him spending ingredients beyond what they already had orders for. It made sense why he'd want no extra baking going on. A bad cook would eat into his side of the profits, assuming they could get anything of what was produced sold to begin with.

"That all comes out of my fifty, including taxes."

Lex grimaced slightly. Small businesses could be hard on the paperwork sometimes. Even with LexCorp's set up largely already modeled off of LuthorCorp's longstanding practices, it had been difficult to keep track of everything, let alone adapt or improve it. They'd had a not-too-small HR department, stationed right at the factory itself, for a reason.

"You're also coming in on a business that already has an existing customer base," Jonathan said, "and I'll be the one who's going to be doing most of the selling--"

"--All right," Lex cut in. This was the worst business-related 'haggling' he'd ever done. He could certainly sell himself better than this! "Fifty-percent for existing orders," Lex tried. "Seventy-percent for new ones, or orders that stay on the books from people who I bake something for in the meantime." He licked his lips self-consciously. "Because if I get them to place another order, it'll be because of _my_ work, not _your_ selling."

"I'm pretty good at selling," Jonathan said with a lazy smile.

"If they don't like what I make, they won't buy again," Lex insisted, staring Jonathan in the eye, and trying not to think about that too hard or he might panic slightly. Just a bit. Because he really could use the extra money at the moment -- whatever he could get -- and even if he was no Martha ~~Kent~~ , that was fine. He really doubted Martha would be continuing her baking business while she was staying up at the mansion, so he wouldn't be competing against her outright. He didn't even need to be as good as Martha Kent to continue the business; he only needed to be good enough that people would still want to order the goods at or near the current prices. But if he was bad enough that the current customers wouldn't want to buy _at all_...

"Hm," said Jonathan. "Suppose that might be true, if you didn't improve quickly. Otherwise you'd have to practice at it, and we'd have to give away a few new samples at some point to try and get back customers if you did," Jonathan told him, clearly mulling it over. "Might have to lower the sales prices..."

"Fifty-percent now; seventy for the ones I keep or bring in," Lex insisted again, staying cool and calm outwardly, while inside he was sweating.

Jonathan thought about it a little more, then simply shrugged. "Fine," he said.

"Okay," Lex said, still feeling tense as all get out. He couldn't believe that he'd actually pulled this off. He didn't know a damn thing about baking, past general and nebulous knowledge on how to operate an oven range. Despite what some people might say, neither organic chem nor biochem were the same as cooking, a stove was not a bunsen burner, and metal pots and pans most certainly must conduct heat differently than glass beakers and test tubes.

None of that was anything that he was about to let stop him.

He stuck out his hand to seal the deal. He didn't really know why, but he _wanted_ to meet the man halfway, if he could, if the irritating old farmer would let him, but he really didn't know if the gesture would work.

Jonathan's eyebrows crept skyward, and he stared at it.

Lex held it there. "We can sign whatever paperwork you need later," he said, trying not to let his impatience show, or his nervousness bleed through into his tone. At a lack of response, he added, "I've only got two hours to get this bread done right now," _and only one shot at getting it right_. He eyed the binder, then glanced back up at Jonathan, "and whatever else is in there that needs to be done today."

Jonathan gave him a long look. Then he shook his head slightly, and got a sad old smile before he reached out and shook Lex's hand.

Lex felt himself relax slightly, slowly, as he pulled away and glanced down at the cookbook, then he turned and surveyed the kitchen, all-business. (Because damn it, he was a professional, and could be as professional as anyone about anything!)

"All right," Lex stated. "What is a bread pan, and where the hell is it?"

Jonathan chuckled at him, then shook his head again, good-naturedly, and proceeded to open up a few cabinets.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It was a good twenty minutes before Lex had the bread dough in the oven and a timer set for when he needed to take it out, but most of that had been spent learning about preheating and setting things up, while the rest had been a very brief introduction to where the hell everything was so he could find it later.

It occurred to Lex that there was a lot of sitting around and waiting for things to bake involved in baking. It also occurred to him that he could probably best spend that time making up the next batch of whatever to stick in the oven after the bread was done and pulled out to cool.

Paging through the binder, he found a calendar-entry list of what looked like the baking orders -- types of baked goods, names of people, quantities, times of day under each date. It looked like the next one was for two dozen chocolate cupcakes with strawberry icing.

He pursed his lips at the cookbooks lining the back of the far side of the countertop, and decided to pull them all out and stack them on the kitchen table. He wanted to see what he was dealing with first. He picked up the first one and paged through the front, then did the same with the second, and the third...

When he was done with his quick perusal, he realized that the cookbook that Jonathan had first shoved at him earlier was the one that likely had most of the current recipes in it; it was also the one with the most markings in the margins. Some of the others had pages tagged with stickynotes, likely standard recipes for the business from the looks of things, though whether they were the main recipes or variations, he wasn't sure. Some seemed to list some very complicated recipes in their most basic form -- ingredients only, few instructions, and only a few notes written by the sides that didn't really clarify much of anything for them at all. The terminology was unfamiliar, and likely required more than passing understanding with inermediate-level cooking techniques, or beyond.

However, there were also a few books that were on very, very basic cooking skills with a lot of pictures and step-by-step instructions, and others that were an introduction to general cooking beyond that. When Lex took them in as a whole, the range seemed to run the entire gamut of cooking experience.

 _That's odd,_ Lex couldn't help but think. Martha knew how to cook, and cook well, so she couldn't need them. So why did she have them? _...Has she been trying to teach Clark?_ But the books weren't new, and Lex thought he ought to have heard about something like that from Clark by now if she had.

It left Lex sighing slightly to himself and putting away all the books but those he thought he needed for the next baked good. He rounded up the measuring cups, tools, containers, and ingredients it looked like he would need for making chocolate cupcakes from scratch, while hoping he didn't end up making a huge mess in the process.

He frowned over that thought for all of two seconds, then went poking about looking for an apron.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Luckily, the 'for beginners' book had said something about baking cups, so his cupcakes would probably come out of the cupcake pan a lot more easily than they might have otherwise if he'd forgotten them. (They reminded him a little of the foil cups that the muffins at the Talon usually came in, actually.)

He had gotten the bread out and cooling on the stovetop, had fanned the oven door in an attempt to air out the oven a bit before lowering the temperature -- to get most of the too-warm air out -- and slid the first two pans of cupcakes into the oven at the correct and lower temperature, all without incident.

He'd just finished cleaning up the bowls and spatulas and measuring utensils he'd used, and sat back down at the kitchen table with the cookbooks again, this time to try and figure out this 'butter biscuits' thing -- maybe there was dough for that in the refrigerator, too? he'd have to check... and would he need to look ahead and try to make dough himself today in preparation for what he might need tomorrow, also? -- when the phone rang.

Lex craned his neck over his shoulder to narrow his eyes at the interruption to his concentration, glanced back the kitchen door, then sighed and got up from his seat.

He picked up the phone, while hoping that they didn't want to talk to Jonathan. The man was out in the fields who-knew-where doing god-knew-what, and Lex would probably ruin his second pair of shoes trying to find him if he had to make the attempt.

It belatedly occurred to him that he might be getting off easy on cooking duty, given that it was far less physically demanding, on both his body and his clothing. It would also be a good idea for him to buy a pair of boots when they went into town later that day as Jonathan had indicated earlier -- at least, he knew Jonathan was going in to town. He ought to be able to hitch a ride along with him when he went to the bank, as he'd indicated before after finding out that Lionel owned the place now, after hearing it from Lex.

After all, if Jonathan was meaning to still supervise him when he was out in the fields for awhile, until they'd really run through everything together -- the way it was done on this farm, the way he did it -- then it wasn't as though he'd be missing getting any work done while Jonathan wasn't there with him. The only thing that would leave as viable unsupervised work for him were baking duties, and the biscuits were the last thing on the list that day.

"Hello?" he heard in the phone receiver, and Lex mentally shook himself.

"Kent Farm," he said. _Idiot! You have better things to do right now than daydreaming!_ "Can I help you?"

The conversation that happened thereafter was not pleasant to say the least. Lex was also fairly sure that he was not cut out to be any sort of customer service person by no less than midway through the call.

It ended with a dial tone and Lex staring at the receiver in his hand with equal parts irritation and frustration.

Lex hung up and stood there for a moment, resisting the urge to punch something. (He shouldn't break things here, after all, it wasn't his house; he was just living in it. Presently.)

...He turned and checked the binder. He then noted the small little symbols next to names farther up the list, and cursed. When Jonathan got back, he was going to sit the man down and force him to explain every last odd little marking in the whole damn binder, and anything else he might need to know about what was in there. Things like, 'we don't have any penalty charge for people who cancel their orders at the last minute.'

Some extra notes on some of the customers would also be of some help. Starting with things like, 'the cupcakes this particular old woman is planning on buying are for a birthday party for her dog,' because that would really save some time and confusion. So would knowing, 'the old woman is a flake but for the love of god don't complete her sentences for her to try and save time,' and, above all, 'don't try and point out to the veteran dog owner that chocolate isn't healthy for dogs, just shut up and let her poison her and her friends' pets in peace.' (Because Lex might not know a lot about animals, but he at least knew _that_.)

While it was possible that Lex might've misunderstood that last one, he didn't think it likely. Frankly, the only way he believed he could have gotten "I was so looking forward to sharing those cupcakes with our little friends, but..." wrong would be if the dogs were actually stuffed animals and weren't really going to eat them. He'd thought he'd been being respectful about it, but apparently really old ladies were really touchy about being wrong, let alone corrected on whatever they were being wrong about.

Granted, he did feel a little bad that that her little dog "Fifi" was sick, but that had more to do with the apparent truth that the dog's owner was a blithering idiot and more likely to accidentally kill it than get it to a vet and well again, _not_ because 'the little dear' was going to miss its birthday party with all its friends.

Getting poisoned on its birthday by its 'parent' probably wouldn't rank any higher than the birthday party being canceled, anyway. So Lex wasn't feeling sorry about _that_ at _all_.

What he was feeling sorry about was that he'd basically lost not only that sale, and also not gotten it penciled in for a later rescheduled date, but from the sounds of things had lost the chance at any future sales to her ever. (Because that was pretty much what she'd flat-out told him. Oh, and apparently he was a 'horrible young man' for refusing to make chocolate ones for her, and trying to force her to pick another flavor instead, in an attempt to try to keep her from accidentally poisoning her supposed best friend in the whole wide world.)

Worse was the anxiety that, given the number of cupcakes she'd ordered, the party had probably included at least three or four other people, all of whom would probably get an earful about that phone conversation gone horribly wrong.

And apparently news traveled fast in town.

Lex was feeling a little ill himself, now.

_Why the hell is this so hard? Just because I didn't know a couple things about who I was talking with?_

...Actually, if he thought about it from a business perspective, it was probably just that. Lex had _never_ tried to deal with a possible customer cold. He _always_ did his research beforehand, and if it was a pre-existing contract, he went and personally wrung every last drop of information out of the person on his staff who'd originally closed the deal with them.

 _All right, I'll just have to get that out of Jonathan, too._ Except that that would require explaining the whole trainwreck of a conversation, which had just been downright _embarassing_ , and--

 _Oh god, what the hell am I going to do with these cupcakes?!?_ Lex suddenly realized with a shock. The cupcakes that were currently in the oven were almost done, but he had another two trays of batter-in-cups waiting for the next bake cycle, and a little more batter leftover from the second dozen besides.

And that irked him to no end. Throwing any of it away would be wasteful, but there was no way that he and Jonathan could eat them all if he baked up the rest.

Then he realized further that he'd technically not waited until confirmation of the order before starting, like Jonathan had said he was supposed to do, because he hadn't understood the markings in the binder correctly, and got angry. ...Then he calmed down again after some pacing back and forth in the kitchen that, technically, they hadn't had final confirmation of the bread order that morning yet, either, and Martha had still made up the dough in preparation for it the night before. Thus, he shouldn't get 'fired' for his mistake with the cupcakes -- that would hardly be fair, and thus likely hadn't been what Jonathan had meant about not baking things without having an order already. The man was hypocritical, but liked to think himself fair, so Lex could probably argue himself out of that one if he tried hard enough.

Damnit, he wished the man carried a cellphone so people could call him when he was out in the fields. Things would be a lot easier on him if the phone calls went directly to Jonathan. _The man's supposedly the one in charge of 'selling' anyway,_ Lex thought dourly. Sure, there might be times that it would be inconvenient for him to get interrupted out there, but he could put it on silent mode. Why didn't he have one at least for emergencies?

Then Lex realized that Jonathan might not be able to afford it.

And then Lex thought about his _own_ cellphone and realized that he'd need to budget money for his cellphone bill into his new monthly expenses, because he needed it for--

...

...

...actually, he wasn't working for LexCorp anymore, so no-one needed to get ahold of him there, he hadn't spoken to any of his 'party friends' from Metropolis in ages, and he'd never liked talking to Lionel, anyway. Nobody else had ever really called him on it. He could probably go without one if he had to and not even notice the lack.

Well, that was kind of depressing.

Lex shook himself again. This was all besides the point. --He had extra cupcakes, and they needed selling!

And then the timer went off and he had to spend a minute swapping cupcake pans around.

...Right. Where was he? --Oh, yes: sales!

So who the hell did he know in town that he could sell two dozen cupcakes to?

He thought about it for awhile.

Then the lightbulb went on.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"How would you like to buy two dozen cupcakes?" Lex said over the phone.

"Lex?" he heard the female voice on the other end say in confusion. "Why are you calling from the Kent Farm?"

Oh, right, the Talon had caller-ID.

"Because I'm on the Kent Farm," he explained, shifting the phone to his right ear. Sometimes he hated being left-hand dominant; it made some things weirdly uncomfortable when they shouldn't have been.

"Why are you on the Kent Farm?" he was asked, with no little curiosity.

"Because I am," he said succinctly. "--Look, can you sell two-dozen cupcakes or not?" he asked, because being the silent-partner had meant that he didn't really know these daily-operation things.

"Sure I can," he was told. "But I'm not buying two-dozen. Six dozen, at minimum. Can Mrs. Kent get that much done in-between the rest in an hour or two?"

Lex pinched his nose and took a deep breath. "I can have them to you by then."

There was a pause.

"Um, I don't mean delivery--"

Oh god, he was so not getting into this. If news of Martha's divorce hadn't made the rounds through town yet, he wasn't about to be the one spreading it around.

So he said, instead, "I'm baking them. I can have them for you within two hours."

...Lex was greatly annoyed shortly thereafter.

"Chrissy," he said evenly. "Chrissy. Stop laughing, Chrissy." He waited. " _Chrissy!_ "

He stood there and waited while she finished laughing hysterically.

"Sorry, sorry," he heard after a while from the coffee shop's early-afternoon shift manager. "It's just..." He heard another giggle. "Are they edible?"

"...Maybe?" Lex admitted in a fit of brutal honesty. "They sort of look like the pictures," Lex noted. The bread did too. That meant they ought to be all right ...right?

"Well, taste-test them and see if they taste like they're supposed to," the shift manager said good-naturedly.

Lex frowned. "I haven't made the icing for them, yet."

"That's fine; that usually covers up the taste some, anyway," he was told. "It's better that way anyway, you'll actually be able to tell if they're okay."

Lex made a face, because he was on the phone and no-one was around to see -- **literally** \-- and then picked a cupcake from one of the cooling trays and carefully took a bite.

He chewed.

He swallowed.

"Well?"

"I... guess it's edible?"

"You guess? You mean you don't _know_ if it tastes--" There was a pause. "Ohmygod, have you never eaten cupcakes before?!"

"--It's fine!" he said. "It tastes like cake, only smaller!"

He heard more giggling over the line.

Lex sighed, and was glad this was a phone call for the second time, because he could outright feel himself blushing.

"Okay, okay, fine," he was told. "If you can eat them without gagging, they're probably fine."

Lex stifled a sigh of relief. "So, amount and price--"

"Price on delivery, gotta taste-test 'em here," she said promptly. "So bring a few extra if you can. And, since you're making them, let's go for three dozen of each type, and four different flavors. You said you've got two dozen chocolate with strawberry icing already, right?"

"Yes," Lex said. "...Any particular flavors?" Not that he was all that sure that he could do requests.

"Nah," he heard. "Surprise us. Just make sure they're _'edible'_ ," and Lex could just hear the grin and the quotation marks. "Oooh -- and _pretty_ , too!"

"Pretty? Really?" Lex rolled his eyes. "Would wrapping them in tiny little bows work out for that, do you think?"

"Oh, sure!" he heard. "Maybe color-coded by type? --Oh, shoot, the coffee delivery just arrived, I gotta go. --Good luck with the baking, byeee!"

Lex blinked, and stood there listening to a dial tone.

He lowered the phone and stared at it.

_But I was being sarcastic about the bows..._

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was not all that happy by the time Jonathan finally came in from the fields close to two-o-clock. He'd had to put all four of the cupcake trays in for each batch all at the same time, two on each oven rack, which caused problems. It left him trying to carefully remove hot cupcakes from metal pans so he could reuse them immediately, and stuck with the results of possibly having ruined entire batches of two-dozen cupcakes at a time if something went wrong.

He'd also read about how the temperature variation in conventional ovens varied within the oven, even, but only after he'd done two batches that way. It left him worried over whether having the cupcakes at two different elevations meant that half of them might not be coming out okay... assuming that the others were coming out okay in the first place.

"...What the heck?" Jonathan said upon entering, which had left Lex having to explain. _Succinctly_ , because he was busy:

"The crazy dog lady canceled her order, and probably won't be ordering from us again," he told the farmer, "which is fine, because she shouldn't be poisoning her dog with chocolate, anyway. You need to explain your little markings," he gestured at the binder, "so I know who has or hasn't confirmed their orders yet, and what the time limit is, and what the price penalties are or aren't for people cancelling their orders, so I don't run into problems like that again."

"All right," Jonathan said slowly, as the timer went off and Lex rushed to get the latest batch of cupcakes out and the new batch in. "But--"

"I'd already started the cupcakes by then," Lex told him sourly, as he moved cupcakes. "I got the Talon to pick up the order, but they wouldn't buy just two dozen of one type, they wanted three dozen each of four, and you really need an extra stove. Also, those cookbooks _suck_ ," he gestured with a glare, " because they didn't say anything about icing melting if you put it on a cupcake while it's too hot," he started putting new cupcake cups out, "and when they say 'until it's cooled' they don't give any sort of indication of temperature, and nothing in those things says anything about whether 'cooling' for cupcakes means letting them sit out in the open, putting them in the refrigerator, or something else. And do we have any ribbon? Apparently I need to make them look pretty. --And they need to be color-coded, which probably makes sense because some of the icings look somewhat alike."

And with that Lex finished pouring the rest of the next set of batter into the cupcake cups, and looked up to Jonathan, waiting for an answer.

Jonathan blinked at him.

"...Yes, we have ribbon. Do you need scissors?"

"Good. Yes. I need four different colors of it."

Jonathan turned away slowly, then walked off, presumably to go get those items for him.

Lex opened the oven, shifted the new set of trays in, and closed the door again.

Then he finished mixing the latest batch of icing, and began slathering it onto the tops of the cupcake batch previous to the currently-cooling set that he'd just pulled out that had just finished baking.

He glanced over at the clock. This was the last batch baking. Another forty minutes and he'd be done with icing everything, and with another few minutes to complete tying bows around the base of each cupcake top, they'd be done and ready to go, if Jonathan helped out.

Well, he should. He was getting fifty percent of the profits, after all, even though Lex had netted this sale all by himself.

At least he didn't have to worry about the butter biscuits today. The woman who had wanted them had called and rescheduled the order, and Lex had made sure to say as little as possible other than "yes ma'am" on the phone to her.

...Maybe he was getting the hang of this baking-business thing after all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jonathan did help out with the ribbons after retrieving the items and washng his hands -- likely not in that order. He was actually scarily good at tying the thin wrapping paper ribbon around the little cakes and into bows.

Lex, on the other hand, was not, so he ended up finishing icing duties instead, and the general packing of said cupcakes into some very handy bakery-delivery trays that they happened to have on hand after giving said trays a good washing and wiping down.

Jonathan packed up in a basket the bread that Lex had tossed in the oven earlier, while fully explaining to Lex the concept of extra loaves, baker's dozens, and taste-testing when he wasn't sure of things. Lex filed the information away for when he might need to attempt making the dough to bake bread -- he'd apparently need to make extras -- and confirmed that the extras would be considered part of his training and that Jonathan would pay for the ingredients, though Lex wouldn't get paid for making them because they would be eaten on-premises by them and not sold.

But with the baker's dozens... "The cupcake trays only have six depressions each," Lex pointed out. "If you sell them by the dozen, then taste-testing them would leave the count at eleven if you baked a dozen at once, and baking them at different levels and testing at only one level would still make for the same problem."

"Yes, but people usually have extra batter left over," Jonathan explained patiently, as they finished packing the bakery trays into the back of the pickup truck, and Jonathan slammed the tailgate back up into place. "You can take one from each... rack and check them, if you have to, and fill up a tray with less than the six cups to finish off the rest of the mix."

Lex frowned slightly as he made his way towards the front cab. There had to be a better way to handle that. It was too bad that the cupcake trays only had six depressions each. Did anyone sell larger ones? Or would it be the same problem all over again?

He shook his head and dispelled the thought, as he yanked open the passenger's side door of the truck. One he was in and settled with his seatbelt on, he said, "I guess it's a moot point anyway, because I didn't really have any batter left over to do much with." He'd managed two-dozen-and-a-half out of each amount that was _supposed_ to make _three_ -dozen, but...

"I noticed," Jonathan told him. "That's probably why the tops of the cupcakes turned out so large." He gave Lex a sidelong look as he started the truck engine.

"They weren't supposed to?"

"Not usually. Not unless you pour too much batter in the cups."

"The cookbook that actually described the amounts to put in the cups said to fill them within a half-centimeter of the top," Lex said. "Was that wrong?"

"Did you use the heating instructions and times from that recipe?"

"Yes."

"Then it's probably fine," Jonathan told him. "They didn't look too bad. Besides," he added, "you tried the one, and it was all right, wasn't it?"

Lex nodded. Jonathan had tried one of the chocolate ones, too, and made no complaints. If he was still fine with them being sold...

"What happens if they didn't come out all right?" Lex asked slowly.

"Then people will either try them, hate them, and complain, or they'll get sick," Jonathan told him, as he backed the truck down the driveway.

Lex winced.

"It's fine," Jon told him as they set out for town. "They won't get sick."

Lex glanced out the side window of the moving vehicle. People in town generally didn't get sick, period, due to the meteor shower, so that wasn't exactly saying much.

"When we get into town," Jonathan continued, "I'll park out in front of the Talon. You can hit that first, while I hoof it over to Edna's to get her her loaf, and I'll meet up with you at the bank."

Lex nodded once.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It was only a little after three-o’clock when Lex walked into the Talon carrying a stack of two bakery trays, and he tried not to wince as he made his way up to the counter.

"Lana," he said, nodding to her. He'd been so busy that he'd forgotten that she usually took the shift right after school.

He hoped Clark was feeling all right. Even if there was no way that he could be...

"Lex." Lana smiled at him, and he stifled another wince as he set the trays down on the front counter. _Great, I'm the sideshow of the week._

"I have a delivery," he stated neutrally, keeping to the facts. "This is part of it."

"Uh huh," Lana said, still stifling a grin. "I can see that."

Lex sighed. Openly.

"Christy left me a note," Lana said, apparently taking pity on him. "Now, let's see here." She checked the note. "Three dozen each of _what_ , exactly?"

"Cupcakes," Lex said, then felt stupid at the look the highschooler gave him. "Chocolate with strawberry icing, vanilla with vanilla icing, strawberry with chocolate icing, and cinnamon-sugar with cream cheese icing," he listed off more helpfully.

And, frankly, he felt lucky that there'd been enough ingredients to make enough of those with no notice whatsoever. He could have taken his car to the store, but he would have had to buy the ingredients himself, and he wasn't entirely sure that Jonathan would have reimbursed him for it if he had. This was mainly because he had no idea what might be more cost-effective to buy, if there was a difference between brands, or any of it. For all Lex knew, they might get their flour from a wheat farm nearby and freshly milled; it had just been in a big old-fashioned metal canister, with another several canisters of it in the cabinets under the kitchen counter -- no labeling.

He also likely wouldn't have had enough time to finish baking them in time for the usual three-o'clock rush, if he'd had to make a trip to the store.

Lana had been busy marking down his descriptions on her note from Christy as he'd talked and then mused.

"Hmm," she said. "Interesting flavor combinations."

Lex, instead of saying, 'they are?', decided to take a cue from his failed and not-so-failed-except-for-the-ribbons phone conversations earlier: he stood there and kept his fool mouth _firmly_ shut.

He also did not complain when Lana picked up one of the cinnamon cupcakes and took a bite, other than to say, "That's part of the three-dozen for those." He hadn't had the batter to make any extras past the two chocolate ones taste-tested at the house.

Lana nodded absently and set down the cupcake. "It's going to be a little hard to tell the vanilla and cream-cheese icings apart," she commented.

"They're color-coded by the ribbons around the base," Lex said. "Yellow to chocolate, red to vanilla, green to strawberry, and brown to cinnamon."

Lana quickly marked that down, too.

She paused for a moment, tapping her pen against the notepaper, then said, without looking up, "I'll give you five dollars a dozen."

Lex kept his expression smooth and amiable. "That's only a little over forty cents a cupcake," he pointed out. The binder had listed fifty cents a cupcake. He wasn't about to charge less than the base cost! "You could easily sell these for two-fifty each," he pointed out. "I'll sell them to you for two dollars a cupcake -- twenty-four dollars a dozen. That's fifty cents profit for you per item sold."

"We're on Main Street -- they might not all sell, and we've got a lot of expenses," Lana pointed out. "Besides, we're doing you a favor in buying them."

"I'm doing you a favor in selling them," Lex replied smoothly. "I would have been happy selling two dozen of one; the minimum order insisted upon was three dozen of four." ...Well, technically it had been six dozen at first, but Chrissy had revised her demand upwards, oddly enough, once she'd known that he was the one baking them.

"Mrs. Kent didn't bake them," Lana pointed out.

"No, but they're a rush order, a specialty item, and they're 'interesting flavor combinations,'" Lex pointed out right back. "And if you had a problem with the taste," he nodded at the cupcake, "you would have said something, or refused to buy."

"Lex--"

"If they sell well, then you can charge more later. You can say that two-fifty is a special price offering for just the trial sale."

Lana looked at him, then sighed and shook her head. "Lex, you know as well as I do that a higher markup in the future won't help _today_ \-- not if they don't sell."

"You've got a bunch of hungry ninth-to-twelfth-graders just out of school; they'll eat anything and everything as an after-school snack," Lex said, because it hadn't escaped his notice that the baked goods display case was looking a little bare at the moment.

"They've _already_ mostly eaten everything," she emphasized, pursing her lips.

" _Exactly,_ " he grinned. "Sandwiches earlier, and now they'll want dessert," he told her, because he'd seen the counter after school many times before, waiting for Clark. He might not know the costs or quantities for the Talon's purchase orders, but he knew the sale prices and the items stocked.

"At two-fifty each?" Lana said with no small skepticism in her tone.

"They're almost as big as the muffins you usually sell," Lex pointed out, as he realized it was true. "And those sell for more. _These_ have less nutritional value," he added with a slight smirk, because he knew that was a selling point for the Talon's mostly-teenaged customers.

Lana sighed. " _Fine_ ," she said, sounding very put-upon. "Twenty-four a dozen -- **this** time," she warned. "But you won't be getting daily orders for this."

Lex nodded. --He certainly hoped not! That afternoon had been a frantic mess.

"Go grab the rest; I'll write up the check and receipt," she said, directing one of the other cashiers to stock the cupcakes from the trays he'd already brought in, while she grabbed and erased the small blackboard they used for specials.

Lex turned and left to go get the rest. He felt a little odd at the long stares he was getting as he carried the next two trays of cupcakes in and up to the front, set them down, and carried the now-empty ones back out.

A few people, curious, got up as he left and started drifting up towards the front.

By the time he was done making trips, he was glad that he was only moving two trays at a time, he had learned to raise the trays above his head to get through the standing line crowd, the ravenous locusts disguised as teenagers had already bought and eaten most of what he'd brought in, and the rest were going fast.

 _Well, now I know why they were eyeing me like that..._ he thought. It was because they hadn't been eyeing him. They'd been scoping out the baked goods he'd been carrying, instead. He'd been right about them wanting dessert. ...Had Chrissy ordered so many from him -- the additional six dozen beyond the original specified minimum -- because a different baked goods supplier had fallen through earlier that day?

From the looks of things, many of the student customers had bought more coffee to go along with their purchases, too. And while there were no rave reviews or happy exclamations over the consumption of his supplement to the bakery case, Lex got the general impression from what he overheard as he brought the last two trays up to the counter that the cupcakes were being rated as 'adequate, not bad,' which was more than good enough for him, and something of a relief.

He picked up the empty trays from the previous run and took them out, then came back in and waited for her to finish unloading the last two. As he picked up the final set and tucked them under one arm and she searched around behind the counter to get him his check and receipt, he glanced over and finally paid attention to what she'd written on the blackboard.

'Starter special today: Cupcakes' she'd written, with a few representative drawings and a list of the flavors available. The price was listed at $2.50.

It also read, 'To be available on Flavorful Fridays for $3.25/ea.' and 'Special on the First Friday of every month: 2 for $5.'

Lex blinked at the sign as Lana briskly wrote up the paperwork. "Same amounts next week, for today's price quote, in by two-thirty every Friday," she told him, all-business. "Any flavor combinations you think might be interesting besides these, you run them by me or Chrissy first. You think you can handle that?" She held out the his copy of the purchase order receipt and the payment check to him.

He turned and really _looked_ at her and was graced with the same evil little smile and gleam in her eye she'd given him when he'd been astounded to find out from her that she'd called the health inspector on the Beanery competition to get them put out of business.

_I've created a monster._

...Well, he couldn't exactly complain. The Talon might be getting either fifty-cents or a dollar-twenty-five on every sale they made, but it wasn't certain that every one would sell. So... good for her, he supposed.

And Lex himself was making seventy-five cents profit for every cupcake sold, after the fifty cents off the top and splitting the rest 50-50 with Jonathan. (Unless this counted as a seventy-percent sale, since he _had_ technically sold them himself, in which case...)

He smiled right back, and nodded, and took what she gave him, and got himself the heck out of there, quickly, before he had to start laughing. He'd made a hundred-and-eight dollars for himself on that sale -- _minimum_ , free and clear -- for a little over two-and-a-half hours of work. At about forty dollars an hour? That was _not_ just a modest salary. Not anything like what he'd been paid back when he'd been working for LuthorCorp, certainly, but not modest.

And he would be getting at least that much each week from now on, because fulfilling the future standing orders should count as repeat sales. At the seventy-thirty split, that was... he did some mental math, and realized that after this week, that would come to a little over six hundred dollars a month in disposable income for him right there, just for having the Talon as one once-a-week business customer.

Granted, he didn't really want to go through the same level of stress and frantic rushing around ever again as he had that afternoon, but if he started earlier in the day, or could somehow find a way to get a second oven on hand, then maybe...

~*~*~*~*~*~

"This is a check for $288 dollars," Jonathan said to Lex, after he'd presented the check to him at the bank, made out to "Kent Baked Goods."

"Yes," said Lex.

Jonathan pulled him aside. "This is a check for $288 dollars," he repeated, waving the check at him.

"Yes," said Lex.

"For twelve dozen cupcakes."

Lex was really starting to wonder if he'd undersold them that badly. Lana _had_ caved rather easily on the price, after all, and there hadn't been all that much haggling.

"Well, I wanted to sell them for a profit," Lex said. "And the Talon is marking them up to be in line with their usual prices. It wouldn't make sense not to price them accordingly."

" _Profit_ ," Jonathan muttered. "This is highway robbery!" He glared at Lex. "I thought you said you remembered the prices in the binder!"

Lex frowned at the man.

"I did," Lex told him, "but the first price she quoted was forty cents a cupcake, and that was less than even the average base cost of the ingredients listed in the front of the binder you showed me." If he'd wanted to be more specific about the final price, he should have told him outright what price he should sell them at when they'd been parking the truck, instead of sending Lex in to haggle on his own.

In retrospect, given the markup, he should have asked for two-twenty-five each, _at least_ , but he hadn't really been confident in his baking skills. Maybe he'd be able to renegotiate when he got better at making them?

...Why was the farmer staring at him like that?

He watched Jonathan open his mouth, and then close it again. Then Jonathan licked his lips carefully and said, "Luthor, what was listed in the binder were the usual prices per good we use at the farmer's market when we sell them ourselves. Wholesale, _without_ any bulk discount. **Not** the approximate cost of the ingredients."

Lex blinked at him.

"...Oh," he said.

"How much do you think flour and eggs and some milk and sugar along with flavoring _costs_ , Luthor?" he was asked with no small exasperation.

Lex thought about saying, _well, how was I supposed to know that? I thought you were using top-quality ingredients for everything._ In Lex's experience, quality cost more, after all, and he'd never been in a supermarket to pay attention to the prices of base ingredients for baking things. But that would likely not help matters.

...Fuck it, he was saying it anyway. "Well, how was I supposed to know that? I thought you were using top-quality ingredients for everything. People price things like that at a premium, don't they?"

"Not if you get them in-season, or direct from source locally!" Jonathan rubbed at his forehead, then practically glared at him. "Hell, what did you think we were using, imports from Switzerland?"

"Well, their chocolate is actually rather--"

" _Luthor!_ "

Lex shut up and slid his hands into his pockets, figuring his point had been made.

Then he blinked again and paused as he realized something. "Ah. How much exactly _is_ the general cost for the ingredients for the cupcakes I made?" he asked carefully.

"I'll have to calculate it out from the amounts in the recipes you used to be sure," Jonathan told him dourly, but from the sound of things so far it was probably a lot less than fifty cents a cupcake.

...all right, so he'd earned them both some more money than he'd realized at first. He wasn't exactly _sorry_ about it.

"We are having a talk about fair-pricing things when we get back home to the farm, Luthor," Jonathan informed him under his breath as the bank manager approached.

 _Well, good,_ thought Lex, narrowing his eyes as he shot him a sideways look back. Maybe he'd have a chance to explain to Kent that there was a difference between charging what the market would bear, charging a fair price, and _just being plain stupid about things_.

"Chris!" Jonathan said as the bank manager approached, and everything was all smiles and friendly slaps on the back between them as Lex looked on. "Here's that deposit I was talking about making," Jonathan said, handing over the check.

"Wait, is the account still in her name?" Lex said to Jonathan quietly.

But the man just shook his head at him and then said in normal tones, "I got here a bit before you did, Luthor, and Martha came in earlier this morning. We've both signed off on the account and property transfers, and all the fund splits now; everything's taken care of," he was told.

 _That was quick..._ Lex thought with a mental frown.

"Is there anything you need today, Mr. Luthor?" the bank manager asked him.

"I need to make a withdrawal," he said. He wasn't really sure about the rest...

"--Actually, Chris," Jonathan cut in lowly, "once you're done with that, could we get a room to talk? There are some things..." he trailed off.

"Oh, of course," the manager said, and waved the farmer towards his office before walking Lex up to the front.

Lex made his transaction -- hopefully enough for several good sets of working farm clothes, including good boots -- and paid off his credit cards while he was thinking about it.

He got an odd look from the bank manager at that, but he met it cooly and wasn't challenged on it, as he rightly shouldn't ever have been in the first place.

He trailed behind the manager as he headed back to his office, wondering if he should duck his head in just long enough to let Jonathan know he was headed to Fordman's for alternate, farm apparel -- that was the polite thing to do, wasn't it? -- but Jonathan waved him in.

"Nothing I don't mind you hearing," he was told and, curious, Lex decided to wait on making his purchases in town. Instead, he came in and closed the door behind him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> AN2: ...Yes, I did in fact look up and calculate out how much it would cost to make Lex’s ‘oversized’ chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing in ingredients, and it turned out to be around $0.40/cupcake (...in 2013, around where I live). Considering that I thought that $0.50/cupcake was reasonable for not much more than $0.10 profit per cupcake (not counting oven use and other miscellaneous costs), I’m feeling both pretty good about myself at my shot-in-the-dark guesstimate, and also slightly weirded out ^_^


End file.
